With the advent of an advanced information society in recent years, an amount of data treated by computers has been increasing and there has been a growing need for data centers which perform total management of numerous computers.
A data center in general is equipped with a building constructed on a huge land, a large-scale air-conditioning system, and a large-scale electric system. For this reason, such a data center needs a long time to be completed and, therefore, has a difficulty in quickly responding to an increase or decrease in demand. Against this background, modular data centers have been developed and put to practical use. Here, a typical modular data center is formed by arranging racks which house computers (servers), together with an air-conditioning system and an electric system, in a unitized structure of a given size called a container.
Meanwhile, each computer generates a large amount of heat in association with operation. A rise in temperature inside the computer may cause a malfunction, a failure, or a decline in performance and it is therefore preferable to provide a measure for cooling the computers. In a typical data center, low-temperature air is supplied into a room by using an air-conditioning machine (an air conditioner) and then the air in the room is introduced into the computers by cooling fans (blowers), thereby cooling electronic components inside the computers.
In recent years, there has been an ever-growing demand for reduction in power consumption of data centers from the viewpoint of energy conservation. For this reason, there are many modular data centers which adopt an outside air cooling method designed to cool computers by use of outside air. A modular data center of this type does not have to use a large-size air conditioning machine which consumes a large amount of electricity. As a consequence, power used for cooling the computers is reduced.
Modular data centers adopting the outside air cooling method include one configured to introduce low-temperature outside air directly from an intake port into a container, and one configured to cool the air in a container with outside cool air by using a heat exchanger.
Note that techniques relating to the present application are disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication Nos. 2012-53747 and 2012-97945.